Position in chronology
DP 552
About this tablet
A barley account from Girsu in the Lagash state, written a little before 2350 BCE. Four or five men — two of them named as plowmen — are debited with the grain harvested from a field called Du'uhka that belonged to the great household estate, and the whole lot, 223 gur (many thousands of liters), is checked in by En-iggal, the household's overseer, who has it piled up in the storehouse by the marketplace. En-iggal is a familiar figure from this archive: he ran the grain and wool books of the queen's estate at Lagash, and dozens of his tablets survive. The little year-mark at the end, '5', dates the harvest to the fifth year of the reigning ruler.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
Barley receipts, in the large gur measure: Puzur-Mama, 86 gur 1 barig; Gala-tur, 89 gur 1 barig — both of them plowmen. Inim-mani-zi and Lu-šinig, 16 gur; En-uda-na, 32 gur 1 barig. Grand total, 223 gur 1 barig of barley belonging to the estate, all of it from the Du'uhka field. En-iggal, the overseer, had it stored in the market-house granary. Year 5.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine86 gur 1 barig of barley, by the head (gur saggal) measure — Puzur-Mama; 89 gur (60 + 30 less 1) 1 barig — Gala-tur: they are the plowmen. 16 gur of barley — Inim-mani-zi (and) Lu-šinig; 32 gur 1 barig of barley — En-uda-na. (reverse) Total: 223 gur 1 barig of barley, by the head measure — barley of the domain estate (níg-en-na). It is from the field Du'uhka. En-iggal, the overseer (nu-banda), heaped it up (in storage) in the market-house. 5th (year).
Our translation engine — Opus 5. Reads the photo, translates the cuneiform, and writes a plain-language interpretation. See methodology for limits.
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Transliteration
1(gesz2@c) 2(u@c) 6(asz@c) 1(barig@c) sze gur saggal puzur4-ma-ma 1(gesz2@c) 3(u@c) la2 1(asz@c) 1(barig@c) gala-tur engar-me 1(u@c) 6(asz@c) sze inim-ma-ni-zi lu2-szinig 3(u@c) 2(asz@c) 1(barig@c) sze en-u4-da-na szu-nigin2 3(gesz2@c) 4(u@c) 3(asz@c) 1(barig@c) sze gur saggal sze nig2-en-na GAN2 du5-uh2-ka-kam en-ig-gal nu-banda3 e2-ganba-ka-ka i3-si 5(|ASZxDISZ@t|)
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (ED IIIb (ca. 2500-2340 BC)) — DP 552. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Louvre Museum, Paris, France (P221202) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-opus-5 (2026-07-12/v7-evolved).
Related tablets
Related sources
One of the earliest specimens of human writing. Not literature, not law — accounting. The need to keep track of grain in a temple bureaucracy is what pushed marks-on-clay into a system that could one day carry epics.
A window into the world's first total state. The Ur III administration tracked every animal, every worker, every shekel — for a population in the millions. The level of paperwork was not exceeded until the modern era.